Easy-to-Make Mug Rugs from Charm Squares

Recently, I have received a gift in the mail, and it's a mug rug. These are really nice little rugs that we use for - well, they're sort of as place mats when we have gatherings. It's nice to be able to put your coffee cup down in your sewing room without worrying about it transferring onto everything else, because we have the batting, and the fabric is pretty absorbent. So I was thinking about it and thought I would really like to make some gifts for Christmas, and I didn't wanna use up all of my beautiful materials that were already in one piece, but I thought, you know, I have beautiful materials that are in charm packs, and I have quite a bit of it, actually. I have a variety of colors and I thought that they would compliment each other very nicely. So I decided that what I was going to do was try to design my own pattern and make a cute little mug rug, just out of the charm squares. So what I did was I took, and I'll just give you an example, I started with two like pieces, and thought, okay, now, I would really like something to go in between that, but I didn't want it to be the exact same type of fabric, so what I did was something that would go nicely, still had the squiggles in it, and thought, okay, that's a good start, that's a very good start. And then I wanted something to go on the opposite side. So what I did was I had these two pieces. And then I decided that what I would do is I would sew them each on each end. Now, that's a pretty long mug rug, and actually, if I want to make a large mug rug, I could sew these together, but that's not what I had in mind. I wanted to have some nice, quick, little easy gifts to be able to hand out to some close friends that, you know, we don't really always exchange, but I wanted them to know that I was thinking about them. So, what I did was I folded them in half, and now, you could do one of two things, you could measure, or you could just fold them in half and finger press it. And you'll be able to see where that seam is. It's pretty obvious where the seam is. So then what I did was I just took it, and I put them together, and I cut down that seam. So now, I ended up with two separate entities. So the next thing I did was I made sure that I was able to match all of the seams that were already there. I pressed to the side so they butted up and they locked very nicely together, and I also cut a piece of batting, and I just happened to have a lot of batting that's available to me that - I'm a longarm quilter, so I always have little scraps, so I just decided to cut whatever pieces I needed and make enough of them. Now when you get your quilts back from your longarm quilters, oftentimes they'll give you some of this batting with it. You're gonna wanna use that for something like this. Don't throw them away, there's always a use for them. It also works great for cleaning your machine up. I decided that I wanted to be able to just sew around it, and I had a little opening here so that way I would be able to turn it inside out if I needed to. So I started here, and I just sewed all the way around. As you can see on this one, I actually sewed in black so you could see it. And I'm going to take these off, and we're going to turn it right side out. Now I have this little - this is actually a razor for your eyebrows, and I'm using it as a seam ripper and as an awling tool, so it will push out the corners that I have actually trimmed off, because I don't want a lot of excess bulk inside. And we're just gonna take... And I'm gonna push this through and I'm just gonna poke out each of those corners. Really slick and easy. So we'll set that aside. So here I have one that has been pushed all out, and now what I'm gonna do is I wanna push these in and just crease them the littlest bit, and I will press it, as this one is pressed. See how they're pressed inward? Now you don't have to even hand sew that, because what we're gonna do, is we are gonna sew all the way around, and when we sew all the way around, we catch that lip. So I'm first gonna sew through here, and then I'm going to sew just as I did here. And that's a really nice decorative look. And then when you flip it over, you've got your beautiful little coffee mug rug. Now this is one that I just added a little bit more stitching to, if you can see. And I actually used my presser foot as the guide, I just had an edge along whatever my seam was, and I made sure that it went along the same seam, and I could continue to do that. Another thing to do would be just to stitch straight up and down, or you can go the opposite direction, or you can do diagonal. But they turned out really fun, really easy. You saw how fast it would've been done as I was just demonstrating to you. You can make up four of them within like 10 minutes. And you can have some beautiful, just really beautiful, little handmade gifts for your loved ones. And if you want to, you can have Christmas fabric on one side and maybe some fall colors on the opposite side so that way they can continually be in use. What a nice little gift to give to a loved one. Someone that you care about, that you're not exchanging gifts with, and you just want them to know that you care about them. I hope you try this little project.